A question for Gina Retschnig
How do honeybees choose their queen?
One might think that the honey bee colony is a monarchy with the queen as sole ruler. On closer inspection, it becomes clear that the workers are in charge, writes Gina Retschnig of the Institute of Bee Health.
Bees selectively choose which eggs form queens, although the exact mechanism behind this is not yet clear. However, it is known that queens often come from certain genetic subfamilies in the colony and therefore genetics plays a role in the royal selection. The young queens are reared in special queen cells and fed with particularly nutritious food. The workers raise new queens when they want to multiply as a colony or when the old queen is no longer capable. In this case, the queen is deliberately replaced by being neglected or even killed by her colony as soon as a young queen hatches. You might think that the honey bee colony is a monarchy with the queen as sole ruler. On closer inspection, it becomes clear that the workers are in charge.
About the author
Gina Retschnig
is a senior assistant at the Institute of Bee Health at the Vetsuisse Faculty. She conducts research in the field and in the laboratory, and investigates various factors that influence the health of honey bees. She is also responsible for teaching and works in the fields of academic administration and public relations.
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This article first appeared in uniFOKUS, the University of Bern print magazine. Four times a year, uniFOKUS shows what academia and science are capable of. Thematically, each issue focuses on one specialist area from different points of view and thus aims to bring together as much expertise and as many research results from scientists and other academics at the University of Bern as possible.